2010 XZH ( I'm guessing autumn) LBZ Yi Wu Golden "Brock" Brick this tea like some of my favorite young pu's can be hit or miss. Unfortunately this tea usually comes in on the miss side of things When I first sampled this tea it was knock your socks off amazing full of chocolate covered cherry and mushroom flavor with strong qi the works. Today I loaded up my 110 ml zhuni with eleven grams of very carefully extracted leaf. The leaves in this brick are beautiful but it is very easy to break them when taking the brick apart. I have found with good quality yet weaker lbz such as the 05 Gan En , 05 gouyan and to a lesser extent the xzh yan, It pays to go a little overboard with the leaf ratio. This is my first time doing it with this tea but it seems to have payed off. It does not seem to be hollow all ku and aftertaste. There is actually a substantial bit of flavor. While it is not the chocolate cherry bomb from the sample it is still well worth the price in terms of this years tea prices. I only hope my second brick tastes more like the sample.

I don't drink any EoT 2010 productions very often as I would prefer to drink raw pu which has at least a few years in age. I don't know much about Bada and haven't tried that many other Bada either. So it's difficult for me to say does it taste like Bada.

I notice the colour of the soup is a bit deeper than Hobbes' photo but it's still very green. Taste wise is a bit bland but without much harshness. Sometime I do wonder is chasing single mountain or village is the right approach?

Anyways, one thing I should warn you, is that LBZ does not retain high notes as it ages. They get all walnuts, aged/fermented stone fruits--more apricots than plums, deep woods, and mellow sweetness. The huigans lessens, and the activity in the mouth is less emphathetic. The niceness of aged banzhang materials tends to be about mouthcoats of shimmering sweet flavors, kinda hard to describe, except as an aged huigan that spills instead of spouts. The young tea is relatively different. Never had an old banzhang with that strong orchid note.

To this point by Shah, this is why I personally like Laoman'e more than LBZ, (especially when price is considered, but sometimes without factoring in price). It's not like they are that far away geographically anyhow...but the high notes of LBZ flutter away, where as Laoman'e doesn't have many high notes to begin with, and the ones that are there are gone within just a couple/few years. It's all low and thick later on.

But a good first stage aged Mengsong has both high and low notes. Why compromise?

Methinks your Mengsong has been stored dry and cold.

I can't tell if you are making fun of Mengsong or not - I'm a fan though. Mengsong's low notes never dive deep like Laoman'e. I think the complexity also swings in LME's favor, but that depends on the material.

It is not that one is better than the other, the open market has deemed LBZ one of the most expensive teas (for now), but I am sure there are plenty of people who would prefer a younger mengsong to a younger LBZ or LME, but they are different teas.

For me, it depends on mood. I drink both pretty regularly.

And for Marshaln's point, I think the high notes definitely fade for all of the aforementioned teas. I had a 2012 spring Laoman'e on the weekend that had a lot of floral this and that, it'll be gone in a year or two though, if stored well.

'Why, this tea has been stored dry and cold, just like our shriveled host!'

Was talking about the '05 Mengsong Peacock. It's not much less, if at all, mature than the '08 Lao Man'E Guyun I tried from TwoDog2, which was why I mentioned it. Got that templewood and floral aspect going, along with the deeper tastes.

With aging, all the floral notes will be gone. It's just a matter of time, so if after 7 years you still have floral notes, your tea has been dry and cold, or really tightly pressed, or some combination of these factors that slow down aging, and nothing to do with them being from Mengsong.

Yeah, I get you. I wasn't really talking about those fresh, soft petaled, floral notes. For instance, the black wrapper lbz can have a perfume aroma in early brews. Thinking of it, some Mengkus really maintain the soft floral notes into 5-8 years if you don't store them very humid.

Items like the Mengsong, or aged Nannuo, or Jingmai like the HeShiHua '01 have a very dry floral/herbal/cloth sense, much like some potpourri. When I'm talking quality high and sharp notes in aged tea, it's generally like the above and very welcome, because it balances the deep soil, chocolate, fermented fruit, and wood notes.

As for that '08 Laoman'e, there is a 2012 blend with similar distribution of leaves, same area, also spring material. It is really interesting to drink those two cakes side by side, because of how much floral fragrance is around in the '12. You've have the '08, and all those high notes have vanished, and the bottom notes come up a notch, into that chocolatey umber range. The spring '12 has even lower notes, but they are not complex yet, just strong.

[l]ike the ancient, mist-shrouded trees used to produce pu-erh, these leaves have lost all sense of time—infuse them again and again as they continue to emit fantastically dark flavors of the Cedar Forests of the Mesopotamian gods of Gilgamesh and moss-covered igneous rock floor of the abode of Akheloios, the river god of ancient Aitolia.

[l]ike the ancient, mist-shrouded trees used to produce pu-erh, these leaves have lost all sense of time—infuse them again and again as they continue to emit fantastically dark flavors of the Cedar Forests of the Mesopotamian gods of Gilgamesh and moss-covered igneous rock floor of the abode of Akheloios, the river god of ancient Aitolia.